Rahul Gandhi and the Facebook Request

This week, Facebook announced a major deal that has nothing to do with WhatsApp. The social media giant said five of India’s major political players had agreed to answer questions posed by some of the country’s 93 million Facebook users ahead of upcoming national polls.

All the big names will be grilled: Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s big name candidate for prime minister, Arvind Kejriwal, the upstart face of the anticorruption Aam Aadmi Party, Mamata Banerjee, India’s most prominent female chief minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav, the former railway minister recently convicted of corruption, and Akhilesh Yadav, the head of the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.

There’s only one notable absentee from the list: Rahul Gandhi, the vice president of the ruling Congress party. Co-organizers of the interviews, Newslaundry, a Delhi-based media watchdog website, say they have requested the scion of India’s powerful Nehru-Gandhi family take part and added that they are still in discussions with many leaders about their possible participation.

Each of the hour-long Facebook interviews will be moderated by Madhu Trehan, a veteran Indian journalist who partly owns Newslaundry, and says she has a softer approach.

“If you expect blood on the floor in the show, that is not going to happen,” she told The Wall Street Journal by email.

“We are creating a format where there will be less argument but more of an engagement with citizens of India, where they will get clarity on the positions each politician is taking,” she added.

Inspired by U.S. President Barack Obama‘s “Facebook Live” townhall session with the American public during his first term in 2011, questions will be from Facebook users and audience members made up of “students, farmers, labourers, businessmen, professionals and journalists”, says Ms. Trehan, who will also formulate some of the questions herself.

Plans are already in the works for a second round of talks with other top Indian politicians before the country goes to the polls by the end of May.

Perhaps Mr. Gandhi will take part in them.

Out of the leaders approached, only Kumari Mayawati, the Dalit leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, has flat-out refused, according to the organizers.

Since Thursday morning, Facebook users have been able to post questions for the first interview with Mr. Modi on the Facebook India page.

As of Friday morning, over 1,400 questions had been posed, including ones addressing how Mr. Modi plans to tackle corruption, improve education standards and the lives of India’s poor. Other questions for the politician include whether he thinks homosexuality is unnatural and should be criminalized, and many on communal relations between Indian Hindus and Muslims.

Social media has slowly been utilized by Indian politicians as Internet usage climbs in the country, to connect with citizens particularly the young who are expected to turn up at polling booths this year in huge numbers to vote for the first time.

Mr. Gandhi, 43, one of India’s youngest Parliamentarians is not on Twitter.

Corrections and Amplifications: A previous version of this post reported that Mr. Gandhi had not responded to a request from Facebook and Newslaundry to take part in the interviews. Newslaundry has clarified that it is in discussions with Mr. Gandhi about his possible participation.

Atish Patel is a multimedia journalist based in Delhi. You can follow him on Twitter @atishpatel.

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